LLAKES Research Seminar, Wednesday 13 June 2012, 3.00-4.30 pm, Room 537, Institute of Education

 “… and for all my sins they gave me a mission”: Recession, Skills, Lifelong Learning and Employability within the Europe 2020 agenda and Education and Training 2020 strategy.

 This seminar will focus on the European Union (EU) policy agenda for Education, Training and Lifelong Learning, within the context of the Europe 2020 strategy and, subsequently, that of  “Education & Training 2020”. 

Europe 2020 is the EU’s growth strategy for the coming decade, and is a major EU initiative, involving a series of integrated public policy developments. It represents the main response of the EU Member States to the impact of the recession, and the strategy’s Education and Training (ET) dimension is considered to be a clear indication of the increasing internationalization of the EU’s overall Education Policy.

The seminar will examine the strategy’s ET benchmarks; composite indicators; policy tools (such as the Joint Assessment Framework and its policy areas), and will assess the current “state of play” of its impementation. Findings on the socioeconomic outcomes of Lifelong Learning in EU will be discussed, with reference to evidence-based policy making in Education, Training and Lifelong Learning. Consideration will also be given to the relationships between Education, Training, Lifelong Learning, Reskilling and Employability.

Nikos E. Papadakis is an Associate Professor and former Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Crete. He is also the Director of the Centre of Political Research and Documentation of the Department of Political Science.

 He is a Special Adviser to the European Commission. Additionally he is a member of the European Commission Standing Group on Indicators & Benchmarks; of the Advisory Board of the United Nations Development Programme/Regional Centre for Public Administration Reform; and of the Board of Directors of the Hellenic NARIC. He is currently a Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Education, University of London.

 Attendance at the seminar is free, but please book your place via llakesevents@ioe.ac.uk

LLAKES Research Seminar, 23 May 2012, 3.00 pm, Room 828, Institute of Education

Dr Martin Weale

“Education and its effects on income, health and survival for those aged 65 and over”

This paper looks at the benefits of education which accrue to people after retirement. Two types of benefit are examined. First of all, income after retirement is, in many cases, influenced by employers’ pension contributions. The effect of education on these is omitted from studies based on data sources such as the Labour Force Survey. Secondly, education may influence both health and survival prospects, both directly and indirectly, through an influence on income, with income influencing health and survival. With monetary value often put on healthy life, any influence of education on expected healthy life years should be added to the effect of direct influence on income.

The study is carried out using the British Household Panel Survey. While there is a relationship between income and education after retirement, a substantial component of which can be attributed to employer contributions, the influences of education on health and survival appear much more prominent among men than among women. For men, significant effects are found even after conditioning on smoking behaviour and health as reported at the age of sixty-five. For women these effects, whilst also generally positive, are not statistically significant.

Martin Weale is a member of the LLAKES research team. However, his main activity is as a member of the Monetary Policy Committee, which he joined in 2010. This followed a term of fifteen years as Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. Before this he worked as a lecturer in Economics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Clare College and, for two years after graduating, as an Overseas Development Institute Fellow at the National Statistics Office in Malawi.

He has researched a large number of aspects of applied economics at both macro and micro-economic levels. As part of his work for LLAKES he has looked at the returns to life-long learning and the incentives to undertake life-long learning. Other research has looked at a range of issue connected with savings and pensions. He has also carried out a substantial amount of work on various aspects of economic statistics.

Martin Weale was appointed CBE for his services to Economics in 1999 and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in 2001. He was a member of the Board of Actuarial Standards from 2006-2010.

Cambridge University, from which he graduated with a BA in Economics in 1977, awarded him an ScD in Economics in 2006. He received an honorary doctorate from City University in 2007.
Attendance at the seminar is free, but please notify your intention to attend to llakesevents@ioe.ac.uk.

LLAKES has hosted the Commission of Inquiry into the role of Group Training Associations (GTAs), chaired by Professor Lorna Unwin. The Inquiry was held from January to May 2012. Written evidence to the Inquiry is provided in the following four documents. Further details will be provided when the Commission’s report is made public.

 http://www.llakes.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/GTA-written-evidence-1.pdf

 http://www.llakes.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/GTA-written-evidence-2.pdf

 http://www.llakes.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/GTA-written-evidence-3.pdf

http://www.llakes.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/GTA-written-evidence-4.pdf

The LLAKES Centre is very pleased to announce that the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has agreed to renew the Centre’s funding for a further five year period, to begin on 1 January 2013.

Details of the research programme for this second phase of LLAKES will be made available later in 2012.

LLAKES Research Seminar, 14 May 2012, 3.00 pm, Committee Room 3

Professor Ida Juul, Aarhus University, Denmark

Parity of Esteem – possibility or utopia? Negotiating equilibrium in Danish upper secondary education

As is the case with other Nordic countries, the Danish school system is comprehensive in nature up to the 9th and 10th grades (the 10th grade being voluntary). However, unlike the rest of the Scandinavian states, the upper secondary system in Denmark consists of two separate streams: one directed towards the labour market (and categorised as “Vocational Education and Training” [VET]), and the other leading into further and higher education (a path labelled as “general upper secondary education”). The question of how to secure “parity of esteem” between these two channels has played a central role in discussions related to successive reforms of Danish VET.

 Professor Ida Juul will discuss the topic of “parity of esteem” in this context, taking the historical development of the Danish VET system as her starting point. Her frame of reference will be the categorisation used in the report launched by the European Union in 1998, titled: “Strategies for achieving parity of esteem in European upper secondary education” (Lasonen & Young, 1998).

Her presentation will be based on a comparative research study. But, unlike the report from the European Union, she will not compare nations; instead, she will focus on the different periods in the development of the Danish VET system, in order to analyse the extent to which current strategy reflects past experience, and/or contemporary consensus in Danish politics. Given the inherent tendencies to assign “potential drop-outs” to the VET sector, and the consequent risks of deterring able young people from pursuing vocational studies, she will discuss the strategies adopted by the Danish government to cope with these challenges.

Ida Juul is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research is focused on the Danish VET system and Danish working Life. She is a member of the editorial boad of Tidsskrift for Arbejdsliv (Journal of Working Life) and The Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies. She has worked in the Danish Trades Union movement, and as a consultant on gender equality. She is working on a book covering the history of the Danish VET system from 1750 to 2012.  

Attendance at the seminar is free, but places should be booked in advance via llakesevents@ioe.ac.uk.

In the lead article, ‘What’s the point of adult apprenticeships?’,  in the Spring 2012 Issue of Adults Learning, LLAKES researchers, Alison Fuller and Lorna Unwin, argue that there is no reason to think that older workers would not benefit from apprenticeships, to help them learn new skills and progress in their careers. But converting existing workers into apprentices to increase the numbers with qualifications is unlikely to help them fulfil their aspirations. For further details, see: http://www.niace.org.uk/publications/adults-learning#contents

LLAKES will be running the following research seminars during May and June of 2012: 

14 May  2012 : Professor  Ida Juul, Aarhus University, Denmark; Committee Room 3, 3.00 pm.

 “Parity of Esteem – possibility or utopia? Negotiating equilibrium in Danish upper secondary education”

 23 May 2012: Martin Weale, National Institute of Economic and Social Research; Room 828, 3.00 pm

“Education and its effects on income, health and survival for those aged sixty-five and over”
13 June 2012: Professor Nikos Papadakis, University of Crete; Room 537, 3.00 pm

“’….and for all my sins they gave me a mission’: Recession, Skills, Lifelong Learning and Employability within the EU 2020 agenda and ET2020 strategy.”
 27 June 2012: Professor Francis Green & Dr Tarek Mostafa, Institute of Education; Room 642, 3.00 pm

 “The Dispersion of Job Quality in Europe”         

Places at these seminars should be booked via llakesevents@ioe.ac.uk.

Professor Lorna Unwin and Professor Alison Fuller will give a presentation on Friday 16 March 2012 at the Oxfordshire Science Festival (Gatsby Foundation & SKOPE one-day seminar).

Their title is: “Where is the STEM in Apprenticeship?”

Geoff Mason, of NIESR, will be presenting at the same event. His title is:

“Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) Technicians in the UK Economy: what mix of skills is required?”.

LLAKES Research Seminar: Bringing the State back in – Privatisation or Re-Statisation of Higher Education in China?

Professor Ka Ho Mok, Hong Kong Institute of Education

Tuesday 13 March 2012, 3.00 pm, Room 642, Institute of Education

Over the past few decades, the Chinese government has concentrated on promoting rapid economic growth to improve the livelihoods of its people. During this period, policy issues relating to social development and human well-being received less attention, though attempts were made to impose neo-liberal ideas and practices on social services, with costs in these areas being transferred from the State and on to individuals.

After three decades of privatising and marketising Higher Education, questions have been raised as to the increasingly heavy financial burdens being imposed by these policies on the Chinese people. This seminar will address the social and political consequences of the privatisation of Higher Education in China; and it will also assess the strategies that the Chinese government has adopted recently to restore partially the role of the State in provisioning and funding Higher Education, in response to the perceived negative consequences of privatisation.

Ka Ho Mok is Professor of Comparative Policy, and Director of the Centre for Greater China Studies, at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. He has worked previously at the University of Hong Kong; and he established the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Bristol. He has published extensively in the field of social development in contemporary China and East Asia, and is a founding editor of the Journal of Asian Public Policy.

Attendance at the seminar is free, but places should be booked in advance via llakesevents@ioe.ac.uk

Briefing documents are now available for the following LLAKES research papers, by Dr Germ Janmaat:

Paper 4: Classroom Diversity and its Relation to Tolerance, Trust and Participation in England, Sweden and German

Paper 5: School Systems, Segregation and Civic Competences among Adolescents